


champagne for my real friends, real pain for sham friends

by ymguchi (complex_andhera)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Retail, Angst, Boys In Love, M/M, One Shot, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 04:29:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8272870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/complex_andhera/pseuds/ymguchi
Summary: he always had a feeling he and tsukki weren't going to be friends forever. after all, how could someone who shines so brightly stay with a burned out star like him? still. a phone call now and then would have been nice. maybe a text message once in a while, tadashi isn't that picky. he didn't expect radio silence, and to be ignored like he was lesser than dirt and like the last few years that they had been friends meant nothing to either of them. of course, as soon as he decides to move on, tsukishima comes back into his life and confuses him all over again. (the one where tsukki went to uni and yamaguchi couldn't, and kei comes back after graduation.) also known as: boys are stupid, tsukishima is stupid and stubborn, and it's going to take ages for them to get together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is kind of based off my experience when I took a semester off of uni and worked full time @ cvs it was wild

the coffee's bitter in his mouth, scalding on his tongue but he needs it more than anything if he's going to be covering yet another night shift so his boss can hurry home to rescue her kids from their daycare. he was still a bit hungover when she called him about 20 mintues ago, asking if he could cover the store for her, so he'd pulled on last night's dress pants and made himself a cup to go. 

still, he doesn't hold the long nights against her; his mom used to stick him into daycare and after he got to middle school he hardly needed her for anything anymore. saeko's kids are pretty damn adorable and still totter around the store on occasion, begging him to carry them on his back, and he really doesn't want the same thing to happen to them. 

"thanks again, tadashi! shimada-san says you're a great help, maybe we could have you moonlight around here once in a while if he's not too busy," chimes saeko behind him, rooting around from her purse behind the counter. 

tadashi smiles but it's more sardonic than sincere. shimada still works him as hard as he did in high school, but he has been promoted to a shift manager so his pay is (slightly) better and occasionally he does get a weekend off to himself. he's still working his ass off, except he isn't a teenager anymore, so it's more sad than it is anything to brag about. 

it doesn't help that most of his old teammates got the hell out of this small town as fast as they were able. he's still bitter about not having enough money to go to university, but he guesses he should be grateful to shimada-san for giving him a job straight after graduation, and for even recommending him to saeko so he could take pick up some late shifts at her music shop when he doesn't have enough hours to give him.

he's gotten used to the routine that comes with working full time, usually more than ten hours a day. wake up. drink coffee. smoke. vacuum, stock shelves, wipe down the counters and perform inventory every other week, along with the other mundane responsibilities of ringing up customers and chasing out loitering kids that look like they’re about to shop lift. smoke again, and pick up takeout or an instant dinner, and maybe a case of beer if he's feeling particularly self deprecating. 

usually, saeko's store isn't too busy at night time, and she has tanaka mind the shop when he's back home during breaks from school and long weekends. he likes that saeko lets him listen to music while he's working, and he's even allowed to borrow some of her CDs as long as he brings them back eventually. the door has a bet attached to it that rings whenever someone walks in and he has to greet them, and he's almost done sweeping and doing last minute clean up. 

it's sad but he's actually getting excited about finally being able to sit down after 8 hours and finish his sudoku in peace. shimada would kill him if he saw him goofing off like that when he should be calibrating the electronics and checking software updates (for the third time in a row) but saeko doesn't care if he has down time as long as customers aren't complaining or trying to return clearly used items. he sets the broom down and puts away his cleaning supplies, excited to be able to close down soon, but as soon as he sits down and pulls out his puzzle book when he hears the spoil sport - ding ding of the bell at the door. 

"Fuck," he mutters. 

He barely covers with an "Hello, Welcome to Tanaka Music, please let me know if I can be of any help," in his fake retail voice, and he prays that its just some strung out punk who'll spend 30 minutes checking out records before buying the cheapest one. 

"I don't remember you sounding so fake," he hears a dry voice cut through the ambient silence of the empty store and he the pencil he was holding falls out of his hand and rolls down on the floor. it comes to a stop at the customer's feet, and his smirk widens even more as he picks it up. two steps, and he's closing the gap between them, and when tadashi looks up he can't lie to himself and tell him he's never seen this man before. the tell-tale freckles, the sharp, augmented cheekbones, and the low, sarcastic tone are all the same as he remembers them (and believe him, he'd been trying his hardest to try to forget). 

his eyes moves up from the stylish loafers, to the slightly-loose-but-stylishly-ripped-on-purpose, and onto the simple white button up. he forces himself to ignore the huge hands and the collar bones that he used to fantasize about in high school, but he can't kid himself anymore. tsukishima kei is standing in front of him, plain as day (or night, as it be). 

"hello, tadashi. it's been a while hasn't it?" he lets out, the same monotone and lack of interest heavy in his voice as it’s always been. he used to find this particular trait particularly cool and alluring, but something about the mockery in his tone makes him think about the past and before he knows it he's seeing red and his fists are moving before he can control himself. 

he hits tsukishima, hard, right between his eyes. 

distantly, he hears the sound of glasses crunching but the rage that he's pent up and tried to ignore for the last four years comes back to him the moment that his former best friend dares to talk to him with familiarity, like a day hasn't passed since they played volleyball together.

tsukishima goes down easily. 

he's always been a skinny fuck, and even with his height advantage, the weight of yamaguchi's anger carries from his fist to tsukishima's skull and he's crumpled on the floor, his nose bleeding and his sick smirk wiped off of his face entirely. 

yamaguchi glares down at him. tsukishima looks up at him, disbelieving, clutching his nose as blood drips out of it and onto his pristine button down shirt. yamaguchi feels some consolation watching him suffer, but he still reaches and arm out to help him up. tsukishima looks at him, suspicious, but his face is blank and he pulls him up before tsukishima can scramble away from him. 

he turns on his heel and pulls out a tissue box from the counter. "the bathroom is down the hall, to the left," he says, back to pretending like they're nothing more than strangers. he almost throws the box at kei's head but settles for handing it to him wordlessly so he can mop up the red tide coming from his face.

"wash up on your way out, please. auntie will kill me if i send you home like that," he tries to dismiss him coolly, but tsukishima doesn't let him. he snatches the tissue box out of his hand and yanks him by the wrist, hard. 

yamaguchi bites back a yelp of pain. tsukishima pulls him until he's only a couple of inches away from him face. 

"you don't have to worry about your reputation, yamaguchi," he bites back, and tadashi tries to pretend that the threatening lowness of his voice doesn't do anything to his heart.

"i can keep a secret," he continues, looking tadashi directly in the eyes as he mops up the blood till it slows to a trickle, "it'll just cost you dinner, that’s all,"

"For $1000 a month, I can buy his silence, huh?" he can't stop the thought from coming to his mind, but he smartly chooses to keep that particular sentiment to himself just in case tsukishima decides he wants to pay him back for clocking him in the face and he ends up bleeding and bruised as well. 

"i can do dinner. you like instant noodles or chinese takeout, huh? it's been a while since i paid for your meal, anyways," 

you complete fuckin asshole, he adds on, as tsukishima is distracted prissily adjusts his glasses. 

"you think i'd make it that easy for you, huh, tadashi?" yamaguchi flinches at the casual use of his given name, 

"looks like you still are an idiot." 

\--

when tsukki demanded him to eat dinner with him, the last place he expected to find himself was at the door of the tsukishima mansion, and later at his parents' table as kei's parents fawned over him and thanked him for "taking care of kei after he was hit in the face with a door,". 

even tadashi felt like that excuse was a bit feeble, and he and akiteru shared a look when kei monotonously insisted that he was fine and nobody had attacked him. furthermore, it didn't helpt that this wasn't yamaguchi first time back at the tsukishima house since graduating. 

he wasn't proud of but he had been back a couple times, when kei had first left for college. almost no one knew that he'd been crying when akiteru had opened the door and let him in when he was searching for kei, and that he maybe had gotten quite drunk and come onto kei's older brother instead. 

it only gets worse because that wasn't an isolated incident that they could both be embarrassed about and forget happened.

he'd fucked akiteru for comfort plenty of times, and after the first time the two of them had actually become pretty good friends with benefits. tadashi enjoyed drinking akiteru's booze and akiteru like fucking him into the mattress when both of his parents were at work, so it worked out well between the two of them. 

even if kei had been away at school for a while, he could read the guilty looks on both of their faces during dinner and he was aware that something had happened between the two of them, even if he didn't know exactly what. yamaguchi's tell was that he was fidgeting uncontrollably, and akiteru had never been very good at lying to his younger brother in the first place. 

kei excused himself after finishing his meal neatly, and tadashi took it as his cue to thank tsukishima's parents for the meal and head back to his craphole apartment. but kei was not having any of his excuses, and he was yanked back to the kitchen to help clea the dishes and then yanked by his collar once again as tsukishima dragged him up the stairs and all but shoved him face first into his bedroom. 

"jesus christ stop tugging already, you fucker, im not going anywhere," yamaguchi complained loudly, but kei was only satisfied after he was pretty much thrown onto kei's twin size mattress and the rood was locked so he had no escape. 

tsukishima took his place on the desk chair, and if yamaguchi stopped thinking too hard he could picture them in the exact same positions like they back in high school, him begging tsukishima to help him study for an english final and tsukishima slyly distracting him with console games or even the both of them watching video game walk throughs on youtube together, kei still in his chair and tadashi huddled, standing behind him, paying more attention to the way the screen light hit tsukki's face than to the complicated gameplay. 

but now, yamaguchi doesn't feel the same need to be a polite houseguest. he's still pissed at tsukki for up and leaving him without a word, for four fucking years, and even if he can't say it, he can still pull out a pack of cigarettes and light up while looking kei directly in the eyes, challenging him to say anything in protest. 

tsukishiama just raises and eyebrow and when yamaguchi is distracted, eyes closed to take his first puff in, kei steals the cigarette out of his hands and takes a long drag from it before handing it back, wordlessly. "thought i was the only one who picked up the bad habit, he says quietly, and from this angle he still looks pretty young, almost subdued. yamaguchi's anger softens a little but he still can't stop himself from being derisive as usual. 

"didn't think a pretty college boy like you would have so many problems, huh, tsukki?" 

kei's eyebrows narrow together. "oh, just because we I work dead end jobs, doesn't mean I don't get stressed out some times, you fuck," 

there's hardly any bite behind his words, though, and he moves from the desk chair to the bed so his warm side is pressed up directly against tadashi, who tries to hold back a shudder. they used to sit like this all the time, hovered over yamaguchi's laptop watching nature documentaries or playing two player games on his game cube in the summertime. 

"why the fuck did you disappear on me?" he looks up at kei, his gaze unguarded, and his eyes slightly misted over. "did you want to forget about us?" 

"what do you mean by 'us', exactly?" tsukishima grits out, almost bitterly, "you mean the part where you worship me and i'm a total asshole to you? is that what you were missing?"

yamaguchi knocks his side back, hard. "you knew i could take it, when it came from you. it was nothing like those…." he trails off. 

he hasn't thought about being bullied for a really long time, especially because clinging to tsukishiama for so long effectively eradicated that problem for him. it seems that all of his unpleasant memories will be coming back to the surface of his consciousness today. 

before he realizes it, yamaguchi is crying. he's always been an ugly crier, the kind to let snot drip down from his nose and let his face turn an ugly shade of ruddy red. the tears start welling in his eyes and he thinks that he can control it before tsukishima notices is, but coming back to the room where he's spent so much of his childhood and adolescence, seeing tsukishima after such a long time that his heart has begin to ache and his lungs have dropped from his chest into this shoes...it just became sensory overload for him. 

something warm is covering his body. he looks up from his hands and he breathes in deeply with his face buried in tsukishima's shirt. he absently notes that tsukishima still doesn't wear cologne, and he takes in the soft smell of masculinity and generic detergent. 

his clothes are soft and his hands were strongly completely wrapped around yamaguchi's slender shoulders. 

he's about to be furious with himself for letting his thoughts go back to obsessing over everything his beloved tsukki is doing like he used to do in high school. he'd been so confident that he'd moved on, even if he could never forget him, and now here he was, waltzing back into his life and holding him like they used to do as children during sleepovers, as if no time had passed at all. 

(except then it had been yamaguchi who had longed to hold him, and tadashi as the one who initiated their hugs, with tsukishima grudgingly giving so that he'd finally get off and leave him alone.)

he lets out a shuddered cry at that realization, and he feels like it serves tsukishima right to get his snot all over his nice dress shirt. his grip only tightens and he fists the cloth of tsukishima's shirt like he's holding on for dear life. he stills for a moment when he feels tsukishima's fingers running through his hair. 

the soft touch jolts him back to the absurd reality of where his is, crying his heart out into the shirt of his childhood best friend while said friend strokes his hair in order to calm him down. 

he can feel himself beating tsukishima with his fists, not hard enough to hurt but he's almost hysterical now, whispering why why why into kei's chest while he does nothing more than hold him in his arms so he doesn't try to hurt himself. 

he's easily overpowered but yamaguchi doesn't care. four years of anger isn't going to be forgotten so easily, but he's so stupidly happy to have his best friend back that he tries to savor the moment for a second, and gets lost in the feeling of kei's arms and soft skin overwhelming his senses. 

"don't you ever fucking leave me again, do you understand, asshole?" he's whispering through angry tears. 

kei wraps around him, surrounding him, taking over all of his senses, and yamaguchi just lets him. 

"i won't, tadashi. 

i won't leave you ever again,"

**Author's Note:**

> comment/kudos are appreciated !! i love yall
> 
> tumblr @ andhera
> 
> twitter @ ymguchis


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